You need to stop using that sort of connection string ... it is telling the system to try and attach a physical file as the database - as opposed to letting ms sql do what it does best and manage the database as part of its system.

This method is fraught with problems and is something that was only ever designed for simple system testing and definitely not for any form of live services.  One of its bigger issues is that it needs to attach to file open resources directly - and since there are sometimes a limited number of file resource available - this can cause the sort of timeout - cant open database issues you are seeing.

Your connection string should take the form of something like:

Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=databasename;User ID=xx;Password=xxxxx

Where Initial Catalog is the name of a database attached to your installed ms sql server instance.

Westa

Hi Everyone,

Based on feedback from all three of you, I've taken the steps below, after which I am now getting the Under Construction message consistently.  Refreshing the page and recycling the app pool no longer fix it (even if temporarily.)  So, we have some progress...just not sure if it's forward or back ;-)  I'm sure I've jsut missed a step.  Hopefully, one of you will know which one.

1) Followed the instructions in the article Sebastian sent to attach the DB in Mgmt Studio, and set up permissions.  The article only mentions giving permissions to the ASP.NET user, but Michael has mentioned that NETWORK SERVICE also needs access, so I repeated the steps given and made NETWORK SERVICE a dbowner as well.

2) Changed my connection string to: <add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=False; Database=<dbName>" />  Note, I tried a few variations based on the article, and on posts here, and that's the last one I tried. 

3) I also noticed that there is a similar connection string in <appSettings> in the web.config file.  Thinking this might need to be updated as well, I've also tried adding: <add key="SiteSqlServer" value="Data Source=.\SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=False; Database=<dbName>" /> to that section, but the results were the same, so I changed it back.

Thanks!